Beer has been around for millennia. The ancient Egyptians and people from Mesopotamia were brewing beer since at least the fifth millennium BC. In the 7th century, beer was made in monasteries throughout Europe and the industrial production of beer started in the 19th century where it has continued until today. In the United States, beer production generates more than $100 billion in revenue. The market share for craft beer revenue in the United States has been growing and in 2014, it was estimated to be about ⅕ of the total U.S. beer revenue.
The combination of contract brewers, microbreweries, brew pubs and regional breweries brewed slightly more than 5,000,000 barrels of beer in the United States in 2004, wherein in 2014, the combination of these amounted to over 20,000,000 gallons of beer. Thus, small beer brewing has been increasing as a share of the total beer industry.
One big potential problem with the production of beer is contamination that may be caused by bacteria. In many cases, bacteria that are present in a brew may grow faster than the yeast that ferments the beer, leading to contaminated beer. Two of the more common bacteria that contaminate beer are pediococcus and/or lactobacillus bacteria. Although one may be able to still drink the beer, these bacteria often provide the beer with a stench that reminds some of rotten cabbage and/or a smelly cheese. Other bacteria that are more dangerous include the various strains of Escherichia, Campylobacter, Listeria, Clostridium, Brettanomyces, Acetobacter, and/or Staphylococcus. If any of these various strains of bacteria infect beer, it can result in severe symptoms for the drinker. Generally, only a few of these bacteria can survive the fomentation conditions to make beer. Nevertheless, to reduce the risk of bacterial contamination, a thorough cleaning of the beer fermenting apparatus is necessary.
The big industrial breweries have established brewing standards that allow for cleaning of their equipment by the use of mechanical means such as scrubbers, harsh detergents, and solvents. Smaller beer breweries and home brewers often lack the initial capital resources to employ some of these expensive cleaning implements. Moreover, small batch brewers also often wish to avoid the use of environmentally questionable cleaners that the industrial beer producers use. Home brewers tend to have even less capital available for cleaning than do the beer breweries so they tend to use low tech cleaning such as the use of scrubbing brushes, soap, and water.
Generally, when one home brews (or brews on a small scale), one will use carboys or some other suitable container that allows one to foment beer. In carboys, krausen, which is the foamy and bubbly head that forms on the top of beer during primary fermentation may bubble up sufficiently so that the wort may remain stuck on the top inner surface of the carboy. If one employs brushes to clean the carboy after fermentation, cleaning the upper inner surface of the carboy often proves to be problematic as the brush cannot easily pass through the hole of the carboy and then reach the upper inner surface of the carboy. Accordingly, when the carboy is employed again for the next beer fermentation, the carboy may not be sufficiently clean, leading to some of the problems discussed above.
It is with these drawbacks in mind that the instant invention was developed.